JOURNEY TO GUATEMALA. 



157 



According to another statement, the Columbian galley 

 Voladora, which left Acapulco on the 20th of January, for 

 Realejo, experienced the darkness at twenty leagues from 

 the shore, as well as such a copious shower of dust, that 

 the crew were apprehensive of being suffocated, and were 

 occupied during forty-eight hours in shovelling it from the 

 vessel's deck. 



I have been assured by Colonel Galindo, of Guatemala, 

 an intelligent man, and by other persons, that the noise of 

 the eruption was heard as far as Oajaca, three hundred and 

 fifty miles in a direct line from Cosiguina ; that at the port 

 of Balize, in the bay of Honduras, the British authorities 

 were doubtful whether the reports alluded to were the 

 firing of a vessel in distress, or a naval action ; and that in 

 the interior of said settlement, the inhabitants universally 

 believed that an enemy's force was attacking the town. 

 It also appears to be beyond doubt, that at Kingston, in 

 Jamaica, more than eight hundred miles from the volcano, 

 the noise was heard, and supposed, as at Balize, to be sig- 

 nals from some vessel in distress, till the ashes that reached 

 even there, showed it to be a volcanic eruption. It is even 

 asserted the said sounds were heard in Santa Martha, in 

 New Granada, and in Santa Fe de Bogota. 



Before concluding this chapter, a few remarks on the 

 character and customs of the natives of Central America 

 may not be uninteresting. It is only in the city of Guate- 

 mala, and in one or two of the larger towns, that civiliza- 

 tion and the arts have made any considerable progress. In 

 the rest of the republic — in the country and in the villages 

 — the simple and primitive mode of life of the inhabi- 

 tants differs only in a slight degree from that of the abo- 

 riginal Indians, whose condition and habits have been 

 already noticed. The manners and dress of the citizens of 

 Guatemala are essentially the same as those of the corres- 

 ponding classes in the mother country. The ladies, as in 

 Spain, wear the mantilla and veil when they go to church, 



